An early depiction of pipa player in a group of musicians. These works present a radical departure from the compositional languages usually employed for such an instrument. Credit Line: The Crosby Brown Collection . Biwa music is based on a pentatonic scale (sometimes referred to as a five-tone or five-note scale), meaning that each octave contains five notes. Several schools of biwa playing evolved from the ms tradition, one of which, founded in the 1890s by Tachibana Chij and others and called the Asahi-kai, was based on the style of the Chikuzen region of Kyushu. The biwa is a plucked string instrument that first gained popularity in China before spreading throughout East Asia, eventually reaching Japan sometime during the Nara period (710-794). The biwa ( Japanese: ) is a Japanese short-necked wooden lute traditionally used in narrative storytelling. Kindai-biwa still retains a significant number of professional and amateur practitioners, but the zato, heike, and moso-biwa styles have all but died out. Malm, William P. 1959. Another Chinese four-string plucked lute is the liuqin, which looks like a smaller version of the pipa. Multiple strings are often played in one pluck like an arpeggio. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are as essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. Liu also studied with other musicians and has developed a style that combines elements from several different schools. de Ferranti, Hugh. There are three small soundholes on the soundboard: two visible ones (hangetsu) partially covered with moon-shaped caps made of ivory and a hidden one (ingetsu) beneath the string holder. By the late 1940s, the biwa, a thoroughly Japanese tradition, was nearly completely abandoned for Western instruments; however, thanks to collaborative efforts by Japanese musicians, interest in the biwa is being revived. With the rounded edge of the resonator resting in the players lap and the peg box end of the instrument tilted to the left at about a 45-degree angle from vertical, the biwas soundboard faces forward. Koto. Kishibe, Shigeo. Example 4 shows the basic melody of Etenraku's section B and C, and its rhythmic accompaniment. Several types of biwa, each with its own social setting and repertoire, have evolved in Japan over the past 1300 years, the specimens pictured here being called most accurately the chikuzen biwa. (92.7 20 12.7 cm), Classification: The Museum looks forward to receiving your comments. The loquat is in the family Rosaceae, and is native to the cooler hill regions of south-central China. There were originally two major schools of pipa during the Qing dynastythe Northern (Zhili, ) and Southern (Zhejiang, ) schoolsand from these emerged the five main schools associated with the solo tradition. Shakuhachi 2. The sound can be totally different depending on where the instrument is hit, how the plectrum is held, and which part of the plectrum hits the surface. The biwa is related to the Chinese pipa, an instrument that was introduced to Japan in the late 7th century. Its classification is a type of a Chordophone. 2000. [2] Pear-shaped lutes have been depicted in Kusana sculptures from the 1st century AD. [68] The Shanghai progressive/folk-rock band Cold Fairyland, which was formed in 2001, also use pipa (played by Lin Di), sometimes multi-tracking it in their recordings. The pipa, pp, or p'i-p'a ( Chinese: ) is a traditional Chinese musical instrument, belonging to the plucked category of instruments. 4. The left hand techniques are important for the expressiveness of pipa music. In the present day, there are no direct means of studying the biwa in many biwa traditions. Its pick or bachi () is the largest among all types of biwa it sometimes used to strike the hard soundboard sharply to create percussive effects, adding a more dynamic flavor to the music. Pipa is also an important component of regional chamber ensemble traditions such as Jiangnan sizhu, Teochew string music and Nanguan ensemble. Chikuzen biwa music is narrative music much beholding to narrative shamisen music. Its plectrum varies in both size and materials. We continue to research and examine historical and cultural context for objects in The Met collection. Because of its traditional association with silk strings, the pipa is classified as a silk instrument in the Chinese bayin (eight-tone) classification system, a system devised by scholars of the Zhou court (1046-256 B.C.) Ueda Junko and Tanaka Yukio, two of Tsuruta's students, continue the tradition of the modern satsuma-biwa. Also known as mouth organ. This music was cherished and protected by the authorities and particularly flourished in the 14th-15th centuries. The flowers fluttered, and from Heaven the phoenix trilled, The body is narrower and smaller than the other types of biwa. During the Yuan dynasty, the playwright Gao Ming wrote a play for nanxi opera called Pipa ji (, or "Story of the Pipa"), a tale about an abandoned wife who set out to find her husband, surviving by playing the pipa. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. The Traditional Music of Japan. Japanese and foreign musicians alike have begun embracing traditional Japanese instruments, particularly the biwa, in their compositions. The instrument initially used for this practice was the four-stringed chikuzen biwa (gallery #1), which was produced and sold cheaply--a fact attested to by the numbers of such instruments taken overseas by working-class emigrants. (de Ferranti, p. 122) [The instrument pictured in gallery #1 is very likely one of those many biwas taken overseas--it was purchased in a Honolulu shop specializing in Japanese antiques many of which were brought to Hawaii by Japanese immigrants in the early 20th century.] Chikuzen Biwa. The design and construction of the 5-string Chikuzen biwa pictured in gallery #2 is basically the same as for the 4-string model described above except accommodations need to be made to the pegbox (detail #7) and bridge (detail #8) for the additional string. . Played with a large wooden plectrum, the instrument has four or five strings of twisted silk stretched over four or more . All rights reserved. Instrument Information Origins. Biwa. NGDMI v.1: 234-237. Ye Xuran (), a student of Lin Shicheng and Wei Zhongle, was the Pipa Professor at the first Musical Conservatory of China, the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Brian Grimm placed the contact mic pickup on the face of the pipa and wedged under the bridge so he is able to plug into pedalboards, live computer performance rigs, and direct input (DI) to an audio interface for studio tracking. In 1868, the Tokugawa shogunate collapsed, giving way to the Meiji period and the Meiji Restoration, during which the samurai class was abolished, and the Todo lost their patronage. Because of this tradition as a narrative music, the biwa is mostly played solo and is less commonly played with other types of instruments, except in gagaku () or the court orchestra where it is used in its original instrumental role, and in modern instrumental repertoire. Popular Japanese three-stringed lute. A new way to classify the acoustical properties of woods and clearly separate these two groups is proposed in this paper. He also qualified as a doctor of Chinese medicine. CLASSIFICATION DIAGRAM OF WOOD A fundamental structure of string instruments in the Asia and Western is a box-sound hole structure [4,5] as seen in the harpsichord, guitar, violin, and biwa . The origin of the Japanese biwa as a generic type of instrument dates back to around the year 700 CE when the pipa was first introduced to Japan from China as part of ensembles gifted to the Japanese Emperor. It is made out of wood, with a teardrop-shaped body and a long neck with four or five high frets, and is stringed with four or five silk strings that are plucked by a big pick called bachi. Tachibana sought to create a new narrative style that would appeal to a contemporary urban audience (de Ferranti p. 120) and that would be performed by sighted musicians. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. The strings are made of wound silk. Its plectrum is small and thin, often rounded, and made from a hard material such as boxwood or ivory. As one of the modern types of biwa that flourished in the late 19, centuries, Satsuma-biwa is widely played today in various settings, including popular media. [12][13] Yet another term used in ancient text was Qinhanzi (), perhaps similar to Qin pipa with a straight neck and a round body, but modern opinions differ on its precise form. The basic technique is to pluck down and up with the sharp corner. to the present. Ieyasu favored biwa music and became a major patron, helping to strengthen biwa guilds (called Todo) by financing them and allowing them special privileges. Samurai ethics and battles were selected as the main themes for this style, called Satsuma-biwa (), and more dynamic techniques were developed. The wu style was associated more with the Northern school while the wen style was more the Southern school. (80 30 3.4 cm), The Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments, 1889, "Musical Instruments in the Metropolitan Museum": The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 35, no. And thanks to the low tension of the strings, it is easy to bend the strings by adding pressure. Several types of biwa, each with its own social setting and repertoire, have evolved in Japan over the past 1300 years, the specimens pictured here being called most accurately the chikuzen biwa. often-used technique is rubbing the long side of the bachi on the strings to get wind-like sounds. Further, the frets and the nut are wide, which provides a surface, not a point, for a string to touch. Dunhuang, Mogao Caves. It is an arpeggio that is always starting from the first string (the lowest) and swepping upwards to either the second, third or fourth string. During the war time in early 20th century, biwa music was easily adapted to the nationalism of Imperial Japan, and many songs that emphasized the virtue of loyalty and sacrifice for the country were created and widely played. Grinnell College Musical Instrument Collection - Chikuzen Biwa. The instrument is played with a large wedge-shaped plectrum called a bachi. A Sound Classification Musical instruments can be classified by the Western orchestral system into brass, percussion, strings, and woodwinds; but the S-H system allows non-western instruments to be classified as well. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. Blind priests would play them in order to tell stories and tales of ancient war. The rhythm in biwa performances allows for a broad flexibility of pulse. Biwa traditions began with blind priests who traveled from village to village singing sutras. In biwa, tuning is not fixed. Kaeshibachi: The performance of arpeggio with an up-ward motion of the plectrum, and it is always soft. The Museum looks forward to receiving your comments. 2. Novels of the Ming and Qing dynasties such as Jin Ping Mei showed pipa performance to be a normal aspect of life in these periods at home (where the characters in the novels may be proficient in the instrument) as well as outside on the street or in pleasure houses.[24]. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Players hold the instrument vertically. Classification: Chordophone-Lute-plucked-fretted. The instrument's rounded rectangular resonator has a snakeskin front and back, and the curved-back pegbox at the end of the neck has lateral, or side, tuning pegs that adjust three silk or nylon strings. Type. Its plectrum is the same as that used for the satsuma-biwa. Each group can include either two open strings or one open and one fingered string. Biwa players no longer enjoyed special privileges and were forced to support themselves. It had a pear-shaped wooden body with two crescent-shaped sound holes, a curved neck, four strings, and four frets. The short neck of the Tang pipa also became more elongated. Liu Dehai (19372020), also born in Shanghai, was a student of Lin Shicheng and in 1961 graduated from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. biwa, Japanese short-necked lute, distinguished by its graceful, pear-shaped body. The biwa is a plucked lute chordophone of Japan. There is little space between the strings on the first three frets, causing obstruction when attacking an upper string whose immediate lower string is fingered in one of the first three frets. One of these, the new chikuzen biwa tradition, became popular amongst many thousands of amateurs between c.1900 and 1920. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press. The Koto came from the Chinese zither "Gu Zheng" during the Nara period in Japan. Figure 6 shows a spectral analysis of the arpeggio read at the attack and one second later. The Biwa is a four-stringed Japanese lute with a short neck that was commonly used in Japanese court music in the seventh and eighth centuries. In Japan the loquat is known as biwa (, ) and has been grown for over . Since the revolutions in Chinese instrument-making during the 20thcentury, the softer twisted silk strings of earlier times have been exchanged for nylon-wound steel strings, which are far too strong for human fingernails, so false nails are now used, constructed of plastic or tortoise-shell, and affixed to the fingertips with the player's choice of elastic tape. Fine strings murmur like whispered words, [3][4][5], The earliest mention of pipa in Chinese texts appeared late in the Han dynasty around the 2nd century AD. This type of biwa is used for court music called gagaku (), which has been protected by the government until today. Hornbostel-Sach Classification of instruments is a means of sorting out instruments according to how it produces sound. [72] He was also the first musician to add a strap to the instrument, as he did for the zhongruan, allowing him to play the pipa and the zhongruan like a guitar. The 4-string chikuzen biwa (gallery #1) is constructed in several parts and needs to be assembled and strung before being played. The first and second strings are generally tuned to the same note, with the 4th (or doubled 4th) string is tuned one octave higher. The plectrum is usually made from rosewood with boxwood or ivory tips for plucking the strings. The texture of biwa singing is often described as "sparse". to the present. The main part of the music is vocal and the biwa part mostly plays short interludes. Written by Nobuko Fukatsu The . This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. [6] Another Han dynasty text, Fengsu Tongyi, also indicates that, at that time, pipa was a recent arrival,[7] although later 3rd-century texts from the Jin dynasty suggest that pipa existed in China as early as the Qin dynasty (221206 BC). [74], Modern pipa player, with the pipa held in near upright position. This is the original form of biwa that came to Japan in the 8. century. The instrument is tuned to match the key of the singer. A number of Western pipa players have experimented with amplified pipa. The satsuma-biwa (), a biwa with four strings and four frets, was popularized during the Edo period in Satsuma Province (present-day Kagoshima) by Shimazu Tadayoshi. Hornbostel-Sachs or Sachs-Hornbostel is a system of musical instrument classification devised by Erich Moritz von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs, and first published in the Zeitschrift fr Ethnologie in 1914. Modern biwa used for contemporary compositions often have five or more frets, and some have a doubled fourth string. This instrument also disappeared in the Chinese court orchestras. A player holds it horizontally, and mostly plays rhythmic arpeggios in orchestra or ensemble. [17] Even higo-biwa players, who were quite popular in the early 20th century, may no longer have a direct means of studying oral composition, as the bearers of the tradition have either died or are no longer able to play. The excerpt is performed by the ensemble Reigakusha. Among the major variants are the gakubiwa (used in court music), the msbiwa (used by Buddhist monks for the chanting of sutras), the heikebiwa (used to chant stories from the Heike monogatori), the chikuzenbiwa (used for an amalgam of narrative types), and the satsumabiwa (used for samurai narratives). [44] The first volume contains 13 pieces from the Northern school, the second and third volumes contain 54 pieces from the Southern school. Continent: Asia. These tunings are relative, the actual pitches a given biwa is tuned to being determined by the vocal range of the singer/player. Interest in the biwa was revived during the Edo period (16001868), when Tokugawa Ieyasu unified Japan and established the Tokugawa shogunate. [42] During the Qing dynasty there originally two major schools of pipathe Northern and Southern schools, and music scores for these two traditions were collected and published in the first mass-produced edition of solo pieces for pipa, now commonly known as the Hua Collection (). However, the biwas cultural significance is due to its evolution during the medieval era into a narrative musical instrument. The satsuma-biwa is traditionally made from Japanese mulberry, although other hard woods such as Japanese zelkova are sometimes used in its construction. This is a system used to classify all musical instruments.This system was created by Erich Moritz von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs.The Hornbostel-Sachs system is based on how an instrument vibrates to produce sound. Influenced by the shamisen, its music is rather soft, attracting more female players. Each type has different and unique tones, techniques, and musical styles. It is an important instrument in the Peking opera orchestra, often taking the role of main melodic instrument in lieu of the bowed string section. It is not used to accompany singing. The biwa, considered one of Japan's principal traditional instruments, has both influenced and been influenced by other traditional instruments and compositions throughout its long history; as such, a number of different musical styles played with the biwa exist. Resonator design, chordophone: bowl with wood soundboard, Vibrational length: tension bridge to ridge-nut, Pitches per string course: multiple (by pressure stopping against fretted fingerboard), 4-string biwa (gallery #1): For a long time, the biwa tradition was carried on by wandering blind monks who used the instrument to tell stories such as the Tale of Heike (). Life in post-war Japan was difficult, and many musicians abandoned their music in favor of more sustainable livelihoods. 5, period of the Northern Wei (384-441 A.D.), A Song dynasty fresco depicts a female pipa player among a group of musicians, Group of female musician from the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period (907-960 AD), A mural from a Yuan dynasty tomb found in Hengshan County, Shaanxi, showing a man playing the pipa, A group of Qing dynasty musicians from Fuzhou. [31] The pipa is mentioned frequently in the Tang dynasty poetry, where it is often praised for its expressiveness, refinement and delicacy of tone, with poems dedicated to well-known players describing their performances. The fourth/fifth string G is an octave higher than the second string G. Again, note this is relative tuning; it could be AEAE, GDGD, etc, depending on the players range of voice. These monophonic do not follow a set harmony. Sort by. Several related instruments are derived from the pipa, including the Japanese biwa and Korean bipa in East Asia, and the Vietnamese n t b in Southeast Asia. From the 3rd century onwards, through the Sui and Tang dynasty, the pear-shaped pipas became increasingly popular in China. Lingering, filling the palace hall, spring snow flew. length Like the heike-biwa, it is played held on its side, similar to a guitar, with the player sitting cross-legged. The strings are depressed not directly against the frets, but between them, and by controlling the amount of applied pressure the performer can achieve a range of pitches and pitch inflections. are crucial techniques to create the biwas subtle in-between notes that are unique for fretted instruments. Biwa playing has a long history on Kyushu, and for centuries the art was practiced within the institution of ms, blind Buddhist priests who performed sacred and secular texts for agrarian and other rituals.
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